Recruiting Tigers

It's 2006 but in the Missouri football recruiting offices they're thinking 07, 08, and 09.

"I'm never sure what year I'm in when I'm talking," explained Carol Weis Missouri Recruiting Assistant.

Weis is in her 7th season as a recruiting assistant.

"It's just gotten bigger. More sophisticated more labor intensive," said Weis. "This is the first time I've had 12 students working for me."

Missouri Recruiting coordinator "We look at in the thousands. Our mailing list. we'll have about 12 to 15 thousand guys in our database and we start narrowing down," said David Yost Missouri Recruiting Coordinator.

"Video is the number one thing. Getting it in our hands," Yost said.

It's not how fancy the video is, just a matter the coaches get to see it the tapes aren't only list by player but by school.

"These are all of our high school tapes," Weis explained. "We have them listed by state. Missouri and east and west and this is all Texas."

Missouri football sends out a ton of mail to recruits. 6,000 postcards 3 times a week. That's 18,000 pieces of mail.

"My first postcard. I was like Mizzou?? So, I kept reading it and I kept getting them every week," said Danario Alexander Missouri Fr. Wide receive.

"We're one of the heavier mailers in the country as far as schools go," Yost said. "It's just a process of getting our name in front of a lot of guys."

The communication doesn't just come in the mailbox, but through the phone.

"You're able to text kids now and you've always been able to text kids. You have always been able to. It's just now every kid has texting and every coach knows how to text now," Yost said.

Yost says recruiting Missouri is still the tigers top focus But in the last six years. They've more than doubled the number of coaches who recruit the lone star state.

"It's like a big family," Danario said. "The team. I mean half of the team are from Texas."

Sometimes the coaches wait until the final moments to see if their years of work paid off. Senior linebacker Dedrick Harrington made a last minute decision.

"He signed the papers and called us after the press conference in Mexico. As soon as that happened I remember Coach Walker saying we'll get him back on the mats at 6 am workouts," Yost said.